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Coffee Bluff Marina development plans are back

A controversial plan that would build houses on the site of one of the only public marinas in the city is back, this time with twice as many houses and no more water access for neighbors.

Harold Javetz is asking the Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission to approve plans today for six houses on the current site of Coffee Bluff Marina, and to rezone the property for purely residential use. The land belongs to Rosso Corsa Enterprises, a company owned by Javetz's wife, Rochelle Javetz.

The marina would be closed, its lift and wet docks would become a private amenity for the six homeowners, MPC Planner Gary Plumbley said.

Javetz is hoping the plan will be approved with a little less controversy this time.

"I have the right to do this," he said. "The law is on my side. I'm not asking for any deviation whatsoever from what is the law, and it's been approved before."

The proposal is the latest version of a plan that has had almost as many lives as a cat, each one battled for between Javetz and neighbors who wanted to keep the marina open. Adding to the dust-up was the Coffee Bluff Marine Rescue Squadron, which wrangled to retain access to their launching area and clubhouse on the property. Plans go back as far as 2002, when Javetz submitted a proposal to build three houses. The plans went through almost a dozen rewrites. Three houses became eight, eight became five. Eventually, the MPC and the Savannah City Council approved plans for three houses, which would have kept the marina open.

What's different this time is that Javetz does not plan to develop the property himself. He has a contract to sell to a developer.

Colette Williamson, a resident of neighboring Falligant subdivision and an organizer of its neighborhood organization, hasn't made up her mind whether she will oppose the plan. Her biggest concern was whether Falligant residents would still have access to land in the middle of the property that was planned for a park in the 1880s but never built.

Rosso Corsa owns the land, but the 90 or so original lots were deeded rights to use the park. The current homeowners still have those rights, Plumbley said.

Williamson is happy about that, but upset that the marina will be closed.

"We're losing public access to the water, and this makes me very sad," she said. "Yet at the same time I understand no one can force someone to keep a business open."

It is now costing the family to keep the marina open, and the property taxes have tripled in the last three years to the mid-$30,000s, Javetz said.

"The marina just does not get the support of the individuals out here who would like to see it stay here," Javetz said. "They don't bring their boats here. They go to the free places. I bet there aren't half a dozen people who live in this area that make use of the marina, and it is most unprofitable for me to maintain it."

Williamson attended a neighborhood meeting about the plan Monday night, and plans to be at the MPC today.

"From all the time we spent going over this, it's a little disheartening that Mr. Javetz for whatever reason has not been able to follow through on the plan approved by City Council," she said. "That one kept the marina open, gave him his residential zoning on the eastern end of the property. That was, I think, really the most acceptable version to everybody in the community."